Prince’s History, dictated to Susanna Moodie (born Strickland) (1803-1885), is of particular interest because it was the first published slave narrative by a woman and remains the only known autobiographical account of a woman enslaved in the British West Indies. Prince details the brutalities she faced as an enslaved woman, both physical and emotional, confirming the treatment of enslaved African women about which Equiano writes in his autobiography. Like Equiano’s autobiography, Prince’s History tremendously impacted the campaign to end slavery. Women abolitionists cited Prince’s account to speak against the ways slavery destroyed the domestic lives of black women. Thomas Pringle (1789-1834), Secretary to the Anti-Slavery Society and Prince’s editor, also used Prince’s descriptions of suffering to pressure Parliament toward the abolition of slavery. Readers interested in this eighteenth-century woman writer and other writers who influenced the abolition of slavery can view their texts at the British Library’s West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song exhibition through February 16, 2016.

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Editor’s Notes

When I first volunteered to work with our parent journal, ABO (which was then stillAphra Behn Online), I had a smattering of web design experience and the belief that the academy was ready to stretch beyond the paperbound paradigm that defined the best scholarship. I was lucky enough to work with two talented and passionate…